ABSTRACT
Maurice Halbwachs's publications are very diverse. They include statistical treatises, social criticism, reviews of the social sciences, and several major works on consciousness. Though the themes seems very various, they are not scattered or irrelevant to a central programme, the analysis of the processes of memory. This topic he acquired direct from Henri Bergson, his first master. As a pupil at the Lycée Henry IV, dazzled by Bergson's intellectual power, he was won by him to seek a vocation in philosophy. As is well known, Bergson's whole metaphysical scheme pivoted upon a particular conception of time. He would deplore his fellow philosphers’ undue concentration upon space, arguing that time was neglected and misrepresented by the practice of measuring its passage only by changes in space: the spatial reference obscures the essential subjective experience. When Halbwachs's own approach was formulated it opposed nearly everything that Bergson taught, courteously but uncompromisingly.
